Linda Fairstein leaving court for lunch during the Central Park jogger trial in August 1990.Thomas Guercio

Justice watch: The Defamation of Linda Fairstein

Linda Fairstein, former chief of the Manhattan DA’s Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit, has written 19 mystery novels as well as the definitive book on sexual violence. Last month, the Mystery Writers of America named her Grand Master, their highest honor — but not for long. As Jeffrey Kroessler reports at City Journal, the award was quickly rescinded after a social media uproar over the 1989 Central Park jogger case, which she prosecuted. This was thorough capitulation to “an online mob hurling insults, accusations and uninformed opinions.” In fact, he argues, the trial jury got it right. Nonetheless, despite “all the evidence pointing to the involvement of the five accused youths,” many still embrace the false narrative of “police abuse, false confessions exacted under duress and wrongful conviction in this case.”

Foreign desk: The Strasbourg Terror Attack Is a Big Deal

Tuesday’s terrorist attack is Strasbourg, France may not “look too bad on paper,” relatively speaking, but it’s “more serious than it appears,” asserts Tom Rogan at the Washington Examiner. For one thing, suspect Cherif Chekatt had a hard-to-obtain (especially for someone on a terrorist watch list) semi-automatic weapon as well as a cache of grenades. Second, he was radicalized while serving a non-terrorism-related prison term, a growing concern in France. This “raises the prospect others in his network of prison friends have also been” radicalized and then deployed. Finally, there is ISIS’ “longstanding interest in attacking Christmas markets and similar events in European towns, not simply in major European cities.”

Conservative: Why Dems May Fear Tulsi Gabbard Run

As tricky as it may be to make early judgments about the 2020 White House race, Commentary’s Noah Rothman still argues that “we can safely say that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s interest in the presidency isn’t likely to do anyone any favors, least of all the Democratic Party.” The 37-year-old Hawaiian, Congress’ first Hindu and a combat veteran, is seen as a rising Democratic star. But what makes her stand out is “her views on foreign affairs — and those views are no asset.” Because her “staunch opposition” to US intervention abroad and opposition to radical Islamist terrorism “often manifest in overt support for some of the world’s most atrocious and bloody authoritarian regimes,” particularly Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and his “chief patron,” Vladimir Putin. Fact is, she’s “a painful reminder” of what Democratic foreign policy looks like.

Political scribe: The Rise and Fall of Michael Avenatti

Remember what Michael Avenatti “was the Democrats’ big hope for 2020?” asks National Review’s Kyle Smith. Indeed, the response to his early speechifying “was fanatical,” with Avenatti “hailed as a hybrid attack dog and sex god.” Since then, “his stock has followed somewhat of a Pets.com trajectory” as it became “increasingly clear that Avenatti’s ability to glom onto a litigious porn star was all he had to offer the political conversation.” He tried to peddle “lunatic stories” about Brett Kavanaugh’s supposed involvement in a high-school rape ring. But when his own client backed off, it left him looking “like Al Sharpton during the Tawana Brawley case.” Maybe Avenatti should chain himself to the White House fence: “That’s as close as he’s ever going to get to the Oval Office.”

John Kasich: The 21Trillion-Pound Gorilla in Plain Sight

Do deficits matter? If so — and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at The Washington Post agrees they do — then “the US economy and all of us who depend on its well-being are in deep trouble.” He says too many of his fellow Republicans are deficit hawks in public, while privately supporting “record spending and deficit-driven borrowing that have left us with an unprecedented burden of national debt — more than $21 trillion today and counting.” Congress in 1997 hammered out a bill to slow spending growth, lower debt held by the public and take steps to control entitlement growth. But “that bipartisan spirit didn’t last” and “the old problems of deficit spending returned.” It’s time to address this reality so “we can all sleep at night without a $21 trillion debt hanging over our children’s and grandchildren’s heads.”